abandonware games sorted by popularity

You don’t need to hate spiders to fear Arachnophobia (1991), but it helps. Based on the movie of the same name, it tasks you with exterminating wave after wave of creepy craw...

Zyclunt is a side-scrolling action game developed and published by Phantagram in 1995. The game is set in a dystopian future where incurable diseases and a rise in criminal activit...

Before AI could annihilate grandmasters, Psion Chess was already humbling humans back in 1985. Available for DOS and Macintosh, this game wasn’t flashy, but it didn’t n...

This isn’t Disney’s musical fairytale—it’s a DOS game, which means Beauty and the Beast is way more "puzzle platformer" than "tale as old as time." You play...

Zangband is a variant of the popular roguelike game Angband. Zangband, short for Zelazny Angband, was developed by Chris Weisiger and first released in 1994. The game features...

Before there were AAA games with 100GB installs, there was Amulet of Yendor, a rogue-like so old-school it might as well come with a floppy disk and a sandwich bag of D&D dice....

Before the term “VR” existed, Knightmare (1986, DOS) gave you a taste of immersive peril. Inspired by the UK TV show, you guide a blindfolded knight through deadly dung...

Zany Golf is what happens when someone says, “Let’s make miniature golf, but with teleporters, hamburgers, and anti-gravity pads.” Part mini-golf simulator, part ...

Captain Blood is a space exploration video game released in 1988. It was developed by the French company ERE Informatique, and it was designed by Philippe Ulrich and Didier Bouchon...

The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a first-person shooter with stealth gameplay elements, developed by Monolith Productions and released by Fox Interactive in 2000 for Windows,...

Doomdark's Revenge is a strategy and role-playing video game developed by Mike Singleton and originally released in 1985 for DOS and various home computer systems, including the ZX...

Released in 1991, Fantasy World Dizzy is a whimsical adventure that proves even an egg can carry the weight of an entire fantasy quest. The game blends puzzle-solving with explorat...

Exterminator, released in 1990, is one of those games that knows exactly what it wants to do and wastes no time doing it. You’re thrown into a top-down action scenario with a...

Simon the Sorcerer is adventure game designed by Simon Woodroffe, developed and published by Adventure Soft and released in 1993. Often overlooked, Simon The Sorcerer is one of the...

Clyde is no hero—he's just a guy in a helmet trying to jump through castles and avoid death by... everything. Clyde's Adventure is a charming little platformer that dares to ...

Before Michael Bay got his hands on the franchise, Autobots (1989, DOS) offered a more... subtle approach to transforming robot mayhem. Well, not subtle exactly — more like c...

MechWarrior (1989) was one of the first games to put players inside a 3D cockpit of a giant mech, but it wasn’t just a combat game, it was also an open-ended mercenary RPG, w...

In Gazza 2, the legendary English footballer Paul Gascoigne lends his name to a soccer game that manages to be as unpredictable as his career. Released in 1991, it’s a curiou...

Uridium is a fast-paced shooter from 1988 that wastes no time getting you into the action. You’ll be piloting a sleek craft across massive enemy ships, blasting anything that get...